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Back Home Again in Baileys Harbor
- University of Wisconsin Press
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3 Back Home Again in Bai leys Har bor As any one over sixty will tell you, grow ing old isn’t for the faint of heart. But it beats the al ter na tive, and so we sub mit to the pass ing years with all the grace we can mus ter. This is a book about George and Helen O’Malley, who are grow ing old as grace fully as pos sible in Door County, Wis con sin. They’re peo ple you’d like to know and would be happy to have as neigh bors. Re tire ment hasn’t slowed them down very much, and things still hap pen to them—good things, mostly—al though there are thorns in the roses some times. Op po sites at tract, and George and Helen are a vol a tile and po ten tially ex plo sive mix ture of Irish and Nor we gian. But they’re still happy with each other, and glad to be jog ging along side by side. Their for ti eth an ni ver sary is be hind them now, and they wouldn’t mind hang ing around for an other forty. In case you’re won der ing, Door County is the stony, pe nin su lar thumb of Wis con sin that sticks out into Lake Mich i gan, about sixty miles from Forest ville to Rock Is land as the her ring gull flies. George and Helen were born there, and now they are back after thirty years of mak ing a liv ing in Chi cago. They grew up in the fif ties, when the tour ist in va sion of the county was just be gin ning. George’s fam ily lived in the town of Bai leys Har bor, on the east shore. His father ran a gas sta tion, and was at one time the only man in Door County who could re build a Back Home Again in Baileys Harbor 4 Ford V-8 in one long Sat ur day, with George stand ing by to hand him wrenches. Helen,née So ren son,lived on the fam ily farm and cherry or chard near Pe nin sula Cen ter, a couple of miles to the west. She was an only child, and her mother died young, so Helen had to cook and bake and keep house for her father when she was only a girl, and did a man’s work in the fields as soon as she was able to reach the foot ped als of the old Case trac tor. When she had a min ute to spare she learned the names of the birds that nested on the lit tle farm, con sult ing a copy of A Field Guide to the Birds that she bought with her egg money. Helen was—and still is—slen der and Scan di na vian and easy on the eyes. The years have been kind to her, and she would be called el e gant if she were a lit tle taller. Her hair was—and still is—a corn-silk blonde, al though she al lows some gray to lighten it, now that she is in her six ties. George is dark and Cel tic. He stands an inch taller than Helen, and his curly salt-and-pepper hair is thin ning a lit tle. He has a cyn i cal Irish sense of humor that makes him easy to live with, and a healthy skep ti cism that makes him rea son able. His tal ents are var i ous: lit er ary, mu si cal, and prac ti cal. His writ ing has a cer tain sim plic ity and di rect ness that ed i tors like, he plays a mean viola, and if you need help fix ing any thing from a split in fin i tive to a fuel pump, George is the man to see. If you need sym pa thy, talk to Helen. She’ll lis ten, and under stand, and give you a lit tle plate of some thing just out of the oven. George and Helen went to high school to gether but paid no par tic u lar at ten tion to each other until Sep tem ber 1961, when they were soph o mores at the Uni ver sity of Wis con sin in Mad i son. A raft of...